Team Yandex sign ATF as DM moves to the inactive roster

One of the five players freed by Team Falcons' exit from Dota 2 has found a new team within a fortnight. Team Yandex announced on its Telegram channel on September 17, 2026 that it had signed the offlaner ATF, Dot Esports reported that day. To make room, the team moved DM, its offlaner for about the last six months, to its inactive roster.

The move gives the team that finished third at The International 2026 a player who won the previous edition. ATF confirmed the move on X. His first event in Team Yandex colors comes almost at once: PGL Wallachia Season 9, which opens in Bucharest on September 19.

Dot Esports reports of August 23 and September 17, 2026. The two days run from September 17 to September 19.

A world champion on the market

Ammar "ATF" Al-Assaf is 21 and from Jordan, according to Dot Esports. He plays offlane, one of the five positions of a Dota 2 team, played in one of the two side lanes.

His availability is the direct result of a decision taken elsewhere. Team Falcons announced on September 6 that it was leaving Dota 2 after a strategic review of the games it competes in. The roster it left behind had been one of the most stable in the game: formed in November 2023, it kept the same five, skiter, Malr1ne, ATF, Cr1t- and Sneyking, through The International 2026, Dot Esports reported at the time.

That five won The International in 2025 in Hamburg, beating Xtreme Gaming 3-2 in the grand final. A year later in Shanghai, defending the title, it finished seventh to eighth, after losing 1-2 to Nigma Galaxy in the first round of the upper bracket and 1-2 to Team Liquid in the lower bracket. The placing paid US$133,790.

The Falcons five are not the only players looking for a place. Dot Esports has reported several exits from the game this year, among them paiN Gaming in April, HEROIC in May and Tundra Esports in June, whose roster moved to 1win. After The International, Dot Esports reported on August 24 that Virtus.pro had parted ways with its whole Dota 2 roster while saying it remains committed to the game.

The five have since gone in different directions. skiter has joined Aurora Gaming, Cr1t- has gone on an indefinite break, and Malr1ne and Sneyking had not announced new teams when Team Yandex made its move, Dot Esports notes. ATF is the second of the five to land a new team.

DM steps back after six months

The player making way is Dmitry "DM" Dorokhin. Dot Esports says he had been in Team Yandex's starting line-up for about six months, and that he moved to the inactive roster shortly before the signing. An inactive roster is where a team lists a player it is no longer fielding; the move is not a release, and the team has not announced one.

DM's time in the five was short but productive. At PGL Wallachia Season 7 in March he played as a stand-in for Noticed, who missed the event because of visa issues, according to Dot Esports's page for that tournament. Team Yandex won it. With DM in the side, the team also won BLAST Slam VII and then finished third at The International 2026.

Team Yandex gave no reason for the change in the posts Dot Esports quotes, and no fee or contract length has been made public for ATF. The team's tone was light. "Welcome to the team!" the announcement ended, after a joke addressed to Ammar about handing him the Watson Combo, which Dot Esports describes as ATF's own long-running meme.

The five for Bucharest

ATF joins a roster that is otherwise the one that played The International. The table gives the line-up Dot Esports lists for PGL Wallachia Season 9, with each player's position. In Dota 2, positions run from the carry, who needs time and gold to become the team's main damage dealer, to the hard support, who gives up resources so that others can have them.

With ATF, Team Yandex now has two winners of The International in its five, Dot Esports points out. Saksa won the title in 2022. The International is the world championship of Dota 2, run each year by Valve, the game's publisher, and its winners lift the Aegis of Champions.

A year spent near the top

The signing lands on a team with a strong record this year. In March it won PGL Wallachia Season 7, played in Bucharest from March 7 to 15 with 16 teams and a prize pool of US$1 million, Dot Esports recorded. The group stage was a modified Swiss system, in which teams with similar records face each other, with every series a best-of-three. Team Yandex lost 0-2 to HEROIC and beat MOUZ 2-1, Team Falcons 2-0 and PARIVISION 2-1, three wins that sent it through. In the playoffs it beat Aurora Gaming 2-1, Team Liquid 2-0 and BetBoom Team 2-0, then Team Liquid again, 3-2, in a best-of-five grand final. The title was worth US$300,000, against US$175,000 for Team Liquid in second place and US$120,000 for BetBoom Team in third. The 2-0 win over Team Falcons in the group stage was a meeting with the player who now takes DM's place: ATF was then with the Falcons five he had played in since November 2023.

Two weeks later the team reached another final. At ESL One Birmingham, played from March 22 to 29 with 16 teams and a prize pool of US$1 million, it lost the best-of-five grand final 3-1 to Tundra Esports.

The summer brought another podium. At the Esports World Cup in Paris, played from July 7 to 19 with 24 teams and a prize pool of US$2 million, Team Yandex won Group D with four wins and a draw, nine games won and one lost, Dot Esports recorded. In the playoffs it beat Team Spirit 2-0 in the quarterfinals, lost 1-2 in the semifinals to PARIVISION, listed there as PVISION, the eventual champions, and beat Vici Gaming 2-0 in the match for third place. That finish was worth US$200,000.

ATF was on the other side of that bracket. Team Falcons also won its group, Group A, with the same record, then lost 0-2 to Vici Gaming in the quarterfinals and shared fifth to eighth place.

The International 2026 was the team's biggest stage of the year. The world championship was played in Shanghai from August 13 to 23, its main event at the Oriental Sports Center, with 16 teams and a prize pool of more than US$3.3 million. Seven teams were invited directly and nine came through regional qualifiers. The group stage, from August 13 to 16, was a Swiss system played entirely in best-of-three series: the top three went straight to the main event, the teams placed fourth to 13th went to an elimination round, and the last three went home. Team Yandex did not reach the main event straight from the group stage: it went through the elimination round, where it beat LGD Gaming 2-1.

The main event was a double-elimination bracket, in which a team is only out after its second lost series. Team Yandex's two defeats came against the two finalists. TEAM VISION, the Dota 2 team also known as PARIVISION, beat it in the upper bracket final, and Team Spirit in the lower bracket final on the last day. Team Spirit then won the grand final 3-2 against TEAM VISION. Third place paid US$299,984, or 9 percent of the pool, against US$1,416,786 for the champions and US$433,431 for the runners-up.

First test in Bucharest

The new five will be tested immediately. PGL Wallachia Season 9 starts on September 19 in Bucharest with a prize pool of US$1 million, and it is the first competition after The International 2026, Dot Esports writes. Team Yandex returns as the winner of Season 7, the edition played in the same city in March.

It will not be the only team with a former Falcons player. Aurora Gaming, which has signed skiter, is also in the field, according to Dot Esports. ATF and skiter had played in the same five since November 2023.

The team's own announcement ended with a question to its followers: would the year bring more memes or more trophies? "We'll find out soon," it answered itself. The first answer comes on September 19.

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